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Based on Melville's real-life experiences after having jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands, his first novel was extremely popular, provoking public skepticism until the events within were corroborated by a fellow castaway. Typee is properly considered a work of fiction, as the three week stay on which the author based his story is here extended to four months, and the book is supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and adaptation of material from other Pacific exploration books of the time. The title refers to the province of Tai Pi Vai. Typee was Melville's most popular work during his lifetime; making him notorious as the man who lived among the cannibals.

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Considered to be the least characteristic of Melville's stories, somewhat resembling the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, “The Bell-Tower” is a dark literary work that explores, though never fully reveals, its central mystery. An eccentric artist and architect dreams up plans for a magnificent bell tower. After receiving approval from the city, he happily begins construction. When city residents begin to notice strange occurrences associated with the project, their complaints eventually force the city magistrates to investigate. Showing the magistrates around the tower, the artist proudly shows off his work and answers their questions, but one curiosity remains unanswered—what lies beneath the shroud in the bell-tower?

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A fictionalized account about the revolt on a 19th-century Spanish slavery ship, Benito Cereno was first published in three installments in 1855. Melville scholar Merton M. Sealts, Jr. called the story “an oblique comment on those prevailing attitudes toward blacks and slavery in the United States that would ultimately precipitate civil war between North and South.” The famous question of what had cast such a shadow upon Cereno was used by American author Ralph Ellison as an epitaph to his 1952 novel Invisible Man, excluding Cereno's answer, The negro. Over time, Melville's story has been increasingly recognized as among his greatest achievements.

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In Manhattan, an elderly lawyer's business is growing. Having two scriveners in his employ, the lawyer advertises for a third to meet demand. Enter Bartleby, a glum albeit quality scrivener. However, the lawyer quickly discovers that something is off with his new employee. When asked to perform any duties outside of copying, Bartleby responds with a canned I would prefer not to. Soon Bartleby is living at the office and performing less and less at work. Finally fed up with his strange new scrivener, the lawyer asks Bartleby to leave, only to find himself on the receiving end of yet another I would prefer not to.

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Two photographers from very different cultures swap cities. Chinese photographer Yu Haibo travels to Canberra to capture the young Australian capital, and Canberra photographer Lee Grant travels to Beijing to capture images of the ancient Chinese city. As the two of them photograph the sister cities, they discover new perspectives and come to realize that these two national capitals with their different types of government and their contrasting populations have much in common.

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Pip's life was striken with tragedy as a small boy, being orphaned with the loss of his mother, father and siblings. Pip forms a relationship with the odd Miss Havisham and her lovely adopted daughter Estella. An anonymous benefactor whisks Pip away from the life he once knew and the people he cared for to one of class and high society. When his beloved Estella enters his life once more, after many years apart, she denies him the affections he longs for. Pip has life-altering experiences throughout this story that will keep the listeners intrigued until the end.

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Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written, Anna Karenina is Tolstoy's classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A rich and complex masterpiece, the novel charts the disastrous course of a love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer. Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, and in doing so captures a breathtaking tapestry of late-nineteenth-century Russian society. As Matthew Arnold wrote in his celebrated essay on Tolstoy, We are not to take Anna Karenina as a work of art; we are to take it as a piece of life.

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The backbone of Mansfield Park is based around the marriages of sisters Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and Mrs. Price. Each of these sisters marries a man from a different social class. Lady Bertram marries an extremely wealthy baronet Sir Thomas Bertram; Mrs. Norris marries a clergyman that makes a decent living; and Mrs. Price marries a naval lieutenant, who is injured shortly after they marry causing his career to end with living in poverty. This tale revolves around Fanny Price, who lives in poverty until being sent to live with her wealthy Aunt Bertram. While received warmly at first, what unfolds is a life of cold neglect and further trouble in her new lifestyle.

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One night a stranger wrapped in bandages and eccentric clothing arrives in an English village. That stranger, Griffin, is a brilliant and obsessed scientist who has discovered how to turn his entire body invisible. Although he initially feels joy at his newfound freedom and abilities, that joy quickly turns to despair when he struggles to discover a way to reverse the process. As Griffin gradually loses his sanity, his initial, almost-comedic adventures as an invisible man become overshadowed by a streak of more terrifying acts…First published in 1897, The Invisible Man ranks as one of the most famous scientific fantasies ever written. Part of a series of pseudoscientific romances written by Wells early in his career, the novel helped establish the British author as one of the first and best writers of science fiction, and it continues to enthrall science-fiction fans today as much as it did its first readers nearly one hundred years ago.

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These vivid, tightly focused observations about the life of Dublin's poorer classes originally made publishers uneasy: the stories contain unconventional themes and coarse language, and they mention actual people and places. Today, however, the stories are admired. They are considered to be masterful representations of Dublin done with economy and grace-representations, as Joyce himself once explained, of a chapter in the moral history of Ireland that give the Irish a good look at themselves. Although written for the Irish specifically, these stories-from the opening tale The Sisters to the final masterpiece The Dead-focus on moments of revelation that are common to all people.

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